Ports and Happy Havens

Auckland Star, Volume XLIII, Issue 101, 27 April 1912, Page 16

Ports and Happy Havens

(By ETHEL TTTBHER.) i ——— i XI. | !N HOLLAND. In--iltaly it had seemed to mc there | were no homes —merely houses and ' ruins. In Switzerland all the houses were j homes—homes leaning lovingly together. in the crowded parts, or standing apart j on the hills, with wide-spreading roofs | brooding waxmrv over the hospitable I walls. I And here was Holland hastening to j -pread out her dwelling places on either j side of our train windows —Holland with j her far-stretching, flat plains dotted 'everywhere with dwelling-places. I Houses or homes in Holland '.' Homes ! every one of them, from the palaces that j shelter Queen Wilhelmina to the tiniest I roof tree of the struggling tulipgrower. ; Not a 'brick in any of the edifices but ; ba> been solidly laid with the mortar so cheap in itself, yet 0 priceless to a | nation, the mortar of the goddess Home. I All the distressing detail of poverty's ! squalor or household slovenliness that so j often mars ,-■ lovely landscape is kept ! out of sight in Holland. It seems the ; Dutch ideal to be able to defy it to find j a bit of vagrant paper or an empty tin ; or an un.-uept path. The very poorest houses we saw— very poor -ometimes. pitifully —had ; their clean little curtains and their bril- , liantly-polished brass pots in the wini dows. and a glimpse of red geranium i or the spring's tulips. ' Yes. no one has de-.-eived you; there ■ are windmills in Holland's fields everyj where, everywhere. No one has deceived I you; everywhere, everywhere there are canals. Here is a great barge, with i clumsy square sails, and it seems to be I solemnly sailing across a wide, green ' meadow —you cannot see the narrow, •sunken canal at all from your window. ' Here is a windmill—the artists made i it of grey or warm brown or black tim- ' hers, according as was the necessity for contrast or harmony in the landscape's j scheme. , Here are peasants in the fields; the ; artists have been round to see that they j dress mainly in blues or browns, and al- | ways wear wooden -hoes. J IN AMSTERDAM. j We reached Amsterdam so train-worn ! we promptly went to bed, a thing one ' seldom can do when just arrived in a : new city. No matter how late at night I it is. something compels one to go and j peer about at the mysterious stranger. I But here we only peered for ten mini utes or so; saw the immense concourse of people in the streets tin no other city ' that we visited did we find the entire I population so unanimously turned out ; of doors each night, parading the streets ' and quays or drinking coffee, a- in Am-1 sterdam), were run into a half dozen | times by- boys and girls on roller skates; , caught whiffs and visions of hyacinths j and tulips at the frequent florists, and I then went to bed. if not to sleep. j As in Switzerland, and a-s in some of: the towns in Germany, the sole bed j covering we find here is the feather bed. j It is made ornamental with rich red da- * ; mask, and is swollen to incredible pro-1 , portions—feet deep in very truth. One; 1 creeps under it cautiously, and in a few j i minutes is asleep as sweetly a.- if in an '. [ oven. And then in a few minutes one i ] is awake as indignantly as if in an ice I box. The swelling feather quilt has ; slipped silently off on to the floor, and is ! lying there blandly, as if compassion- | ately protecting the hoards from the [ nip of Zero. I Even if one is very provident and pins i or ties or weights the thing into security I cold currents of air steal in on all sides, ! much resented by nations immutably ; wedded to tucked-in blankets. Next ; time we travel in countries addicted to! ; slippery mountains of feathers we shall | ! provide ourselves with tubes of secotinel ! for the edges. ! In Amsterdam we had our first Dutch' i breakfast. No simple coffee and rolls J '■ here ; the long narrow table at the hotel ] I fairly groaned under its breakfast. Large j i dishes of thinly sliced ham. tongue, and j beef occurred :'t regular intervals, flank- j j ed by bowls of sadads arid, pickles. There i were sausages of sorts. Baskets of S boiled eggs abunded. Here was a huge Dutch cheese. Hot cakes, currant loaves and honey bread were spread about casually, while honey and preserves and stewed fruits filled up any square inch of tablecloth that might otherwise have ; been visible. A highly imaginative woman I once I heard of found herself one evening in a ■ situation of ineffable —she was sitI ting at table actually cheek by jowl with I Browntrc. She trembled and thrilled with the" joy of it: she could not. eat, j j so eager was she to be sure not to miss j a .-ingle utterance of the great poet, j : But she left the table with dashed spirits [ in the end: absolutely the sole remark; the genius had made was. "Excuse the • picnic stretch.'' as he reached the pota- ! ' toes for himself. < ! Here in Amsterdam any next door j ! geniuses they- may have about at the ] I various meals did not even go as far j as this. They simply leaned deliber-j ately across one without any excuse, and I reached for themselves potatoes, or but-| ter or cheese, the two latter invariably 1 on the points of their own knives. j This Amsterdam—what is it. but ' Yenx*e once again. Venice turned au- [ stere and practical. The city is threaded everywhere with canals that cut it up into ninety islands. It takes three hundred bridges to keep communication comfortably established with all its parts. But there are plenty of boulevards and streets, too —streets, many i of them pleasantly planted with tree*. I As in Venice the nouses have their ] foundations on piles driven 40 or 50 feet ' through the soft sand and peat to a . firm substratum of clay. Erasmus who i conferred the honour of his birth on j Rotterdam, hard by. speaks of the people of Amsterdam dwelling "like rooks on | the tops of the trees." We walk about the streets and quays, and look at the forests of masts and i ' tbe tall narrow houses and the storks' j nests, and the canals and the barges coming down them laden from s-tern to I prow with huge baskets of flowers. We look at the penple. and are amazed to find them so like ourselves—much , more so than either th" Swiss or Germans; more than once ><,c are sure that | a passer-by is Errclish. ami make some I inquiry only to be met by such a replyas "Ga recht nit, en dan le evrste straat | links rechts." instead of -(Jo straight ! on and then by the first street to he . right, to the left." IN THE RI.JK'N MUSEUM. We spend a day in the Rijk"s Mu-eum. ! An entire article devoted to it would I . just about touch the fringe of its in- | i terest. Here we find Rembrandt, whom we never dreamed was quite >o tine as this. . The finest photographs, copies, descrip- . tions do not even begin to show the i power of this painter who for so many < yjears- mada- Amsterdam his horn*. ' ,

Those are not portraits on the walls, they are flesh and blood, men and women, stepped out of the past centuries and come to speak to you. They are so « full of vigour, so full of the red blood of rude health and reality that there comes an uncanny minute,when you feet half persuaded that it is they who are j alive, and that the men and women who I *re moving about the galleries in hobble skirts amd sober suits are the pale, ineffectual pictures. j To see a picture like the Night Watch [j makes one pant to be a millionaire: one l< burns to be able to fling down a couple j , of hundred thousand pounds or so and , carry off the canvas and hang it up in j one's far country and call the students to come and look, and shout to them. I "This the way and this that portraits ; should be painted!" I And it is not Rembrandt only who ! paints like this—here are glowing Kit- ' ' bens, and Franz Hals, and Dir.-k Hal-. , and dac. Duck, and dan Steen. and Van ! de VeJde. all stepping healthily out of . their frames. Here is Van dcr Heist's I "Banquet of the Arquebusiers." (Jenera- , tions have marvelled and exulted over I this living picture of twenty-five "-hooters" jovially drinking and eating together. Generations have looked a* their hands—just their hands —and have i known that they were looking at the bands of men. "As like a- a hand to , another hand!"— has I that i if all these hands were thrown together i in a heap there would be difficulty in j restoring them to the figures to which j they belong, and one sees there is , not the least exaggeration in the criti- ' cism. Any painter will paint you a ; miser, and give him .1 lean, cluti bed 1 hand, but here are finer distinctions: the ' lines that form themselves round the' eyes, the month of that good-hearted ! but cautious shooter, they are all repeat ' ed subtly, mysteriously, in the turn o[ j his thumbs, the bond of his knuckles, the ' flesh about his wrists. ! Apart from pictures, there are rooms I filled with accumulations of keenly in- j teresting article-.. In one. fascinating ' models of ships of alj ages and all pur- i poses, from the am in' Hutch galleys , and earliest fishing boat.- by .-low I stages down to the turret ships and i monitors and the modern man-o'-war. In another, a magnificent collection ot china— rarest .Japanese porcelain, lovely ! old blue Chinese ware. Deft china (at its i very- best is this, its home), the green ! and crackle porcelain so enormously j prized by collectors, whole services of ; priceless Faience work. The tollcction I is one of the best in Europe. j And then there is a glass room, and ! one sees frail Dutch jugs and tumblers I wonderfully embellished by seventeenth j century Dutchmen, along with finest examples of Venetian gla«s. and love- ! lie=D opalescent Roman specimens. I There is a room of Dutch carriages I and sledges of past —carriages with runners instead of wheels, that one sees in all the old pictures; sedan chairs 1 made wide to accommodate wide Dutch ! folks. Just outside this room a gallery 1 full of Dutch national costumes, laces. ] I shoes of all centuries. The jonge volkje ; ] find also two large dolls' houses, ccm- ' plete models of patrician dwellings of a 1 .past century, with real tapestries and i I carved ivory figures, and picture-, on the j walls painted by famous artists. "■Rooms of carving*, beautiful and. in-' ' tricate enough to turn the bran of the I amateur wood-carvers. A room or' [splendid brasswork. and a room of the] ■ fascinating embossed silver and gold ! work that is peculiarly a Dutch art — j lovely tankard-s and huge serving dishes, , and drinking horns and sword handle*, and candlesticks and salt cellars, and . snuff-boxes and spoonsdreams of sil- , ver sculpture. j j Several rooms full of collections of j uniforms of several centuries, interesting ancient halberds and seventeenth .en-: ; tury fortress guns, and fourteenth cenI tury mortars. ! One has a whiff of the battles of all j ages in these rooms. I Most carefully treasured are various I guns and flags and figureheads that the i I Dutch have won in their countiess sue- j ! cessful naval engagements. I Captured Indian guns, and Swedish ! flags, and Spanish treasures. I But suddenly we are arrested hr % ' much more intimate thing. Most care- : fully disposed on a wall arc the stern- I piece, with the British coat-of-ann- and ; the fade,! British flag-, that were taken 1 from our flagship the Royal ( harles in i 1667. In 1667. when the Dutch success- j fully made their way up the Thames a? j far as Chatham, and burnt and sunk a 1 number of the British fleet, including I the flagship. We remember two ot , Pepys' many moans over this disaster: ' "And so home, where all our heait, do now ake; for the newes is true, that the I Dutch have broken the chaine and burn- , i ed our ships, and particularly the Royal j I Charles." And in another place; "In j 1 the evening came Captain Hart and Hay- ; I wood, and in talk they told mc about : the taking of "The Royal Charles': tha: i j nothing but carelessness lost th" .-hip. for they might have saved her the very- ' ' tide that the Dutch came up if they , j would have but used means, and had ! plainly lost ail the other ships. That j the Dutch did take her with a boat 01 j nine men. who found not a man on . board her. and her lav ing so near them , I was a main temptation to them to come j ; on: and presently a man went tip and] struck her flag and jack: that they did; carry her down at & time, but for tides ] I and wind, when the best pilot in Chat- ' 1 ham would not have undertaken it. they ! I heeling her on one side to make her j draw little water: and so carried tier j away safe." ' ! SOME ISLANDS IN THE ZITHER 1. ZEE. 1 once met a man who declared to mc j that the Zuyder Zee was blue an in.-on- j : ceivable thing. 1 once met a girl who 1 seemed to have perfectly clear vision. I ! and yet maintained that the Zuvder Zee j could smile. I But 1 declare that it was a yeilow. turbulent monster, and that it showed its , teeth and snapped and snarled without , i cease when we adventured on it. It was an abominable day. A cut- | I ting, bitterly cold wind, laden with all the dust in the Netherlandsno neglig- | ible quality after all. despite th" careful I I vrows — over the city. It was the i day for all sane persons to meet with a j roaring fire and an arm chair and the | newest book. But sanity cannot always be the partner of the hurried tourist. I We were due in Belgium in another -icy j or two. and this special excursion to the islands was not a daily affair. We must either give it up or adventure with set teeth. The devoted tourist never give- anything up. so we set forth. some twenty or thirty equally insane persons in the same boat with us. The fares were expensive, and guides and interpreter? were supplied—we confidently .-ounted on just such glassed-in decks and comforts as we had been met with on the Rhine. But all provided was a ' narrow open-decked- launch, -with a tiny. ■ stuffy enfant ,

The wind from the angry dam of the j Astel tore after us, and more than once | blew people bodily out of their decK 1 chairs. Other steamers scudded hur- I riedly on their way. fishermen's boats 1 went to shelter against the kindly land. ' Several very sick persons were profoundly glad when we made our first j port, the Island of Marken. And now we felt we were indeed in truth in Holland. Amsterdam is a great •"*F> and in all great cities people dress "With a monotonous sameness, one nation as like as pos- j sible to another. But here were "Miss | Hook of Holland" people stepping off the boards end engaged in the plain duties of life. Here were men in huge. baggy trousers, mostly blue or blacS but C sometimes red or green, men with gaily embroidered waastcnats and right little red or blue coats decorated with many solid silver buttons, men -wdth earrings in their ears — with round caps and fat cigars, heavy knitted stockings, and huge wooden sabots. Here were women in many petticoats —many, many petticoats- The hobble j skirt will never catch on in Holland, for the wife of the Dutch, farmer and peas-j ant expresses her wealth and status 1 mainly by her petticoats. | If she has six or eight of them on, ! -ome woollen. some stiffly starched, j highly embroidered, and can roll down i the streets to church with the inimit- j able swinging gait that all these gar-j ments must give, she has the respect ' of the entire Dutch world. If she is cruelly poor she pads herself ; round and round with layers of cheap j cottcn word, and tell? herself she is I ("almost as fat": but no one is really i deceived —he has not the gait. [ It is the cap that lends three-parts ' of the charm to the Dutch woman's appearance. It is the cap that brings ' the artist- from all parts of the Con;- -; tinent and Kngland. eager to make piej ture* of it. and incidentally the face i beneath it. If the face beneath it—the ! typical Dutch female face, fresh-col 011 , ed, fair-skinned, high cheek-boned— were. i surmounted by the hat as we know it— [the Jov.ercla-s hat. trimmed with drag-j 1 gle.l feathers, or tawdry flower-, or faded . : ribbonsthe artist would not want to i ; turn his head But take the same face and surround j it by a close-fitting cap of snow-white j ! lace or muslin, with stiffly starched | wings standing out behind the ears, and at once it has character, dignity, modi esty. I The wife of a better-class fisherman ! proudly displayed to us the family ward ' robe of high-day clothes, which were kept in large curved and painted boxes j in the living room. For ceremonious oc- j casions, slie explained to us. in very good English. as many as four, caps arc worn—an inner skull cap "f fine lace, then one of thin silk, a third! of lace, and then finally the large outer | cap with its white stiff wings. A farm- 1 er's wife in another village showed us with extreme pride her skull-cap of j pure gold, beaten into the shape of the j head. These are worn by the natives of North Holland only, and are carefully I handed down, mother to daughter, through many generations. ! , All the sabot* that we met were of white natural wocd. or varnished brown, or painted black: but different villages,' we were told, incline to different col- j our-. In one the wooden shoes are |:a :,ted red. in another green, in an- j other blue. A single pair will often last I for years, a coat of paint from time to tun" making all as good as new. As 1 some we bought, quite superior ones, j carved and pointed at the toe. cost only j a gulden 1/8), the family boot bill in | Holland cannot be the tragedy it frequently is in poverty-stricken English, families. The stockings are always heavy, knitted ones, and in these is-1 land-- everyone's odd minutes are fru- 1 gaily cast upo,n four knitting needle?' and turned into account. Grave-eyed little maidens clatter up and down the j roads, knitting swiftly at stockings as] long a? themselves: fishermen knit as they lean at the wharves: vrows "step over" to see one another, and turn a heel and work ». foot what time they | are drawing a breath of leisure between the violent cleansings of their houses. Every window in a Dutch house is I cleaned inside and out daily: the out-; side walls and the outside painted work j are scrubbed and washed weekly, justj as much as a matter of course as are; inside floors and painted work in coun- 1 tries less -tartlingly clean. 1 suspect: the very gravel on the neat paths of being scrubbed, pebble by pebble, daily. ! One cannot, therefore, credit Dutch 1 vrows of drawing over-many breath? of ! leisure. ' 1 And for all the slow, deliberate gait I of the baggy-trousered, cigar-smoking I ' men and boy? we saw about, they, too, : 1 must have their strenuous moments, j At Edam {"where the cheeses come ] from"! we went through dairies and 1 stables that were as clean from rafter I to floor a- the cleanest vrow's kitchen. ! i An indefatigable interpreter and a ; ' grave-faced Hollander led U3 step by ! -tcp from the innocent white milk foam-, i ing in the bucket to the red-faced can- ' non halls of cheeses waiting in a room i l"r the magic Edam brand that sends ' j them onL knighted" into a world of pie-, , hewn cheeses. ; \ We remember this cheese village also, I by the church it possesses. It is a" un- , j usually large affair, like a vast stone, , barn: the only entrance to it is by a, ! very modest little door at one -id". ' It i- said that when the building was ' almost completed the architect discovred that he had quite omitted the cus- ! tomary item of a door, but as by that ] time all the money available was -pent. nothing could be managed but the tiny' entraucr through which we passed, j At Monniekemlam. set auother of the "dead cities'" of the Zuyd»r Zee. we found some interesting seventeenth century houses and an ancient Stadhuis' tower, dated 1591. [ It also. like Marken. is overflowing with trading children, boys and girls, j The only method, by the way. of tell- j ing a boy from a girl up to the age of six in .Marken is to look at the lop of . the cap: i." there is a button there ..he j child in question is a boy: if there is ■ no button you may safely call it Marie. After that age the boy goes into' wide trousers and cigar?. in -Ti— i: - :i-| lation of his father: but frequently ti.e top half of him r»::L-iiii- in girl'- d -- ---- ! for two or three mure yo;:rs. ! When Goldsmith let '■:'■ fan-y fly. "Embosomed in the deep where Hoi- ■, land lies." be did not fail t.i r.,jie the persevering work of her "patient ■•r.-.", attributing it in a great degree - .i the incessant care -and vigilance tha - . 1., a nation they are forced to exercise To. keep out the encroaching ocean from! their hard-won lands— "'Thus, while around the wi-e-sub-iecteil soil ' Impels the native to repeated toil. Industrious habits in each bo-.mi reipi And Industry begets a love ,>i gain." j This ""love of gain is nowhere more I plainly to be seen than in these islands i and Tillages. ,

j No sooner has one landed than m . I beset by these children/-whVelr^. 11 I j kets filled with miniature aU?, 1 * 1 I ornaments, knitted mittens, «? ***? I I The instant they see camerasTtfc ?a * j round one like eager bees aid if"' ously insist on being taken. So JS,*" 1 ' they to the coming of the camera^,!! 8 ing stranger and the artist tna?tl£ fall into poses and studied _£**.*«*• set -miles the while one! S3? 5 1 : if the light is good enough IT^ picture. And then, at the went * * j sound of the shutter's click they v i j ™ with" eager hands outstretch \ English sixpence.- they tlwmt -F^ lish sixpence.' *88" One small Dutch maiden hag -.„ . , lowing us persistently to mat „" . fo! " vet more sabots, but we as ,JL ! ■"•? refuse more parcels" At VS^ "'" —I™*—. «* '-Nothing doing? Stony-broke'" ... inquires, and we nod with much -A*? And when we are embarkin* „f "' of the canals, and a crowd of t"he« 0!I5 tic infants is watching us and„* "»■ ally demanding "English pennles^T ■ the kind attention, someoneTf\ f ° r holds „ a -T.au-e M JZH Wrd ' ; song. And the next moment h!** dozen lusty Dutch throats hnrst £"* ! Yankee Doodle went to Cnte^ I Po much for the trail of the tonri » land more especially the American W 1 I .stover these once -SSSw^